On My Mind Lately..

relationships

You turn on the shower, this is no unordinary movement. You open your mouth to say something but don’t even know where to begin. Nothing comes out.

You get in and just let the water run, you’ve done this more than three hundred million times in your life. You’re scared and you know you feel it, but you give it a go anyways. You pour out your heart.

You realize after a while, you’ve gotten used to the heat. You turn the nozzle up. You realize nothing gets through. Nothing is understood. Nothing is more clarified than it was before this new version of the same repetitive argument.

The new temperature isn’t satisfactory, the nozzle goes up another time. You start to feel it again. Different boyfriend, years and years later, same sick wonder. What if none of this changes?

Maybe the temperature gauge is broken, so you crank that bad boy up. It’s almost becoming too late now-it’s feeling like there’s no point in fighting. Fighting for what? You stand back silent, knowing deadliness of the heart.

It’s so different, but so similar at the same time. You know the water is hot enough, but you keep turning it up anyways. The lukewarm water isn’t good enough, it’s not okay to just be mediocre ‘okay.’ You get sick of having to turn the temperature up, so you blast it. The second that scorching water hits your skin you jump back against the cold wall of the shower-out of the direct line of fire of the piercing bullets coming from above. In that fight or flight moment, you choose flight-the fight isn’t worth your heart anymore. Then it all changes, you dabble your fingers in the fight, and try to tell yourself it isn’t as bad as you thought. So you tell your body to armor up, it’s time for battle. You step back into the fire, and let the attack rain down. At first it’s miserable. Your body doesn’t want to stand it, and begs you to give it relief from the misery. Your mind tells you a little more strength and perseverance is all you need, you can take more than you think. All of the sudden you find your mind wandering elsewhere, only then realizing you aren’t thinking about the pain any longer. You put your hand into the bullets and realize you’re numb. Now you think maybe the torture has gone on long enough, and you shut the operation down. Reaching for your towel, all you see is red. You look down and notice it’s everywhere. Your entirety is covered with red. Every single visible ounce of you is blotched and burning bright back up at you. The under-lying bruises are the only things you can see shining clearly through the red haze. Quizzical.

You step out and everything is vivid in your mind. You wonder what just happened?

I’m really such a fool. Only an hour before, I had just gotten done telling my very best friend, basically why I’m the most stupid person out there. Or now so it seems. I had just told her that maybe she didn’t have to be so protective of me this time. That maybe she wouldn’t have to be as worried that something terrible would happen to my heart again. I told her that maybe things would be different for once. Who knew, right? Well, my maybe to her was a big fat no-and she was right. That wife: 1. This wife: -10.

This time though, I won’t burst out of this situation raging, fuming, and filled with remorse. This time, I’ll go peacefully. Knowing that yet again, I’ve done all that I could. In the past I’ve loved, I’ve trusted, I’ve opened up-only to be reassured that you can’t be trusted. Now, I just have to learn. It’s a scarring thing…being in a relationship with a pathological liar. One can assume how much potential damage it carries through to every new relationship opportunity. Let me just tell you, that that is a very real thing. Something I am gaining wisdom on, however, is that it’s not everyone else. It’s not any new guy that could potentially come into my life. It’s not the thought of any other relationship. It’s not them. It’s you. You are the one who can’t be trusted, not by me anyway. It’s time to accept that. I think I’ve learned it a little more at a time. But now it’s come to a determination point, where I feel like I see it more full on, versus the small increments. It’s at a point where I won’t be hopeful for it anymore. It’s where it needs to be. And that’s okay, good rather.

For that moment, or that hour, it did suck. The feeling of hot and sticky tears of so many hurtful years running down my face. The saddest part, I don’t even care enough to ask you why. There’s just radio silence. Nothing left to say, and nothing left to do. It just is. Or was.

I guess I’ve concluded that you were the reason there were never seemingly sparks with anyone else. Secretly, deep down I still did long for your heart. I still yearned for the feeling of being in your arms again. Repeating the memories I had cherished for years. Something sad is that I really think I could have let it all go. Let all the past lie where it may and move forward with you. I think I could have moved on from it all, but still not forget. We don’t forget so we can learn. So we can remember what the pain felt like. Remember what not to do. Remember why we tell ourselves to walk away. I know now that I had it in my heart to push forward, the thoughts of you again in my life. Seeing you as a completely new person, even just for moments at a time. But again, you took that away from me.

Maybe that’s the reason I get so sick to my stomach every time I’m with you, or think seriously about you. I truly think, as I have for a while, that it’s God’s giant billboard of caution to my heart. Warning. You know better. Turn back now.

I know you didn’t do it to hurt me, but it still hurt. I know that you had the best of intentions at heart. But that’s just irrelevant. Actions speak louder than words. Your actions simply contradict everything I believe in, everything I stand for, everything I know I deserve.

It’s just really sad. And it takes a long time and a whole lot of God to heal. Simple, right?

I think you’re the reason I got as ‘good’ at writing as people like to tell me. If I never felt all of the scarring hurt because of us, I wouldn’t have had to much sadness to write about. Always over here looking on the bright side.

So please don’t think that I don’t forgive you. I forgive you. I understand that we all have things that we battle with on a daily basis. But the things that you’re battling are scarring to me, and that’s not something I can just be okay with. There has to be a line drawn in the sand. Showing myself and God that I know how I can honor Him better. So here’s your line in my life. Consider yourself forgiven, and drawn.

So with one last hug, a kiss on the cheek goodbye, I’m left with the bleeding paper cuts from the words I write about you. And you’re left with the wet tears my cheek left on yours. But the blood will dry, and so will the tears.

We’re just a collaboration of bones, filled with qualities that we decide to see in a person. Just loving this person that could or could not be filled with hot air and oozing internal liquids. How messed up.

Words fail me, when it comes to you. Words fail me and it’s literally that simple.

Lately, you’ve been popping up randomly in my thoughts, out of the complete blue. Even as I type those words, I feel like I’m suffocating. I feel like I can’t think straight, like I can’t breath at the thought of you. I think you’ve been showing up in my mind because we’re about to hit a landmark. For eight and a half years, we were friends. We grew closer and closer, and our walls fell down one layer at a time. After five years of friendship, we began a relationship. Some approved, while others couldn’t have disagreed more with our decision. After five short months, I knew you had my heart. I fell so in love with you, I began to forget what life without you ever was. I remember being so cautious in the beginning, waiting for the perfect moment to tell you those three beautiful words. To say them for the first time, and not even be able to begin to explain what they meant to me. That’s how I knew they were true. They were so innocent and pure, so absolutely indescribable. That’s how I knew I loved you. I knew it because I didn’t even have to think twice. It was as if loving you was second nature to my heart. As if I had known all the while that you were the person my heart was longing to hold onto forever. From the day after Christmas on, we started celebrating. One day at a time-you started changing my life. One week at a time-our memories piled up. One month at a time-I got to hold you a little tighter and kiss you a little stronger. One year at a time-I got to understand the deepest parts of who you are. To know the things about you, you can’t fully expose to anyone more than your first love. To dive deeper into your soul than you even knew existed. I know all of this to be true, because you pulled at my life in the exact same way. One year meant a lot to us. Each year was so different than the last. Each held it’s own set of difficulties, while taking our relationship to a completely different place than it had ever been before. I was completely in love with you for sets of three hundred and sixty five days at a time. This time though, the landmark is quite a bit different.

Three hundred and fifty eight days ago, our relationship ended. For the very last time. It was the last time you ever had full preview of my heart. It was the very last day you knew the woman behind the tear stained eyes. There has been so much change within the last three hundred and fifty eight days of my life. On May fourteenth of last year, I was an absolute wreck. I had no idea if my choice to walk away from you was the best thing that ever happened to me, or the biggest mistake of my life. To be honest, some days I still struggle with that contemplation, as if it would ever be a realistic decision I’d ever have to make again. But it won’t be. Because I chose to walk away. I chose to once and for all remove myself from a situation that for a long time, had hurt me more than flourish me. I chose to trust that God would take every ounce of pain this decision caused each of us, and through it instead show us the depths of His abundant grace. And He has. Sometimes I am blind to that fact, but deep down, I’ll always know.

May fourteenth of last year, I couldn’t breath through the sobbing. I couldn’t face you and tell you all of the reasons I knew it had to end. I wasn’t capable of looking you in the eyes and staying strong enough to back away. May fourteenth of last year was the first day I fully gave control of this situation to Christ. Within the last three hundred and fifty eight days, I’ve gotten that surrendering confused in my mind. There have been numerous moments of beyond control breakdowns. Times in the middle of the days I’d want to dial your number that’s been forever engraved in my mind, and listen to you pick up the phone. To hear the hesitation I knew I’d be exposed to when you saw it was me calling you and didn’t know if you should click accept. There have been so many sleepless nights like this one, where I’ve wanted to unblock your number and say something. Anything. To know that everything that ever happened between us was real. That this kind of stuff simply couldn’t come from the depths of my imagination. That I really lived through it all, and am sitting here writing about it now. Pouring my heart onto this page. On May fourteenth of this year, we’re going to reach a new landmark in our relationship. It will create a completion of the first year out of the last four that we never spent a day in a committed relationship with one another. It will prove to me that we broke that cycle-the vicious back and forth that made us hold such a deep begrudging hatred for one another. It’s done and over with.

I can’t really even comprehend it. All of the sudden, last night it just hit me. I didn’t understand why I had been thinking of you so much lately. I couldn’t justify these random thoughts or what emotion they put on my heart. This process, has been something intense. Falling out of love with you. These thoughts of you, they used to be an everyday occurrence. Well really, they used to be an every millisecond occurrence. Back then I couldn’t imagine how one day, it would stop hurting. People around me would try to be supportive; giving me these tidbit encouragement phrases. Really though, the sugar coating only made it a billion and two times worse. I didn’t want to think that someday it would go away. All of my love for you. I didn’t want to have to let go. I specifically remember saying to so many people that I wasn’t strong enough. That it was such a conflicting situation because I didn’t want to move on from you, I never wanted to. Falling out of love, it hurts like Hell. it’s the absolute most heart wrenching and painful thing I have ever experienced. But do you know what’s even worse? Making yourself fall out of love, with the one and only person your heart ever truly cared for in that way. Telling yourself you have no choice but to keep him blocked on everything. Lying to yourself if you have to, repeating any mentally justifying mantras in your mind that make an excuse for the reaps of pain. Burning the letters he wrote like it was your own soul on fire deep inside where nobody else cared to look. Deleting the emails, one by one; as if the person that used to be the only thing you ever knew, never really existed. Staring at the photos, while your mind goes absolutely blank as you look at his face, just like you seemed to have trained it to. Denying any sense of self the moment anyone ever brought his name up. Your body going into shock, confused and conflicted as to whether it’s supposed long and cry for him or miss him and mourn him today. Your heart screams out that you love him unconditionally; and yet your mind asks who even is he?

My heart is the weakest part of me. Every fiber of my being will always long to love and be loved like nothing else in this world existed. Like nothing else could ever matter nearly as much as the person your soul is intertwined with. My heart remembers everything my mind tries to forget. These thoughts of you? They’re burned into the muscle memories of my heart. Spelt out and circulated through my body by the very blood that’s pumping through my veins with every breath I take. My heart thinks of every second I spent loving you. It makes me remember any good I ever believed was created by you in my life. These are the things I made my mind forget. The things I chose three hundred and fifty eight days ago to instead cover up with the scars you carved into me.

I loved you. With absolutely anything I had in me I deeply loved, and cared for you. It consumed me-you consumed me. The way that I cared for you was as simple as breathing. Needing you like I needed the air that surrounded me to keep going through this life day by day. I loved you so much that I let go of myself. I dropped the girl you fell in love with to be the girl who was in love with you. I never saw it until it was too late and too much had changed. All I knew was that I was your girlfriend, and that was all the happiness I thought I needed as a junior in high school, a senior, a freshman in college, and a sophomore in college. My identity became loving you. But by loving you I learned to hate parts of myself. Neglecting the honor I needed to be a woman of God, a daughter, a sister, a best friend, a wife, a student, an aunt, a teenage girl, myself. Letting the rest of who I was fall away, I then only knew to be your everything.

I’m not really sure when I was possessed to change this. When I finally understood the things people in my life narrowed in on from day one of us. One day, I got a grasp on every terrible horrible thing we put each other through. From that day on, I knew my life would never be the same. I knew I would never again look into your beautiful blue eyes and see the innocent hearted young man I grew up knowing and eventually falling so deeply in love with. I knew from that moment forward, you could no longer see me as the beautiful and carefree spirit you had cherished. Even when you don’t tell me, I know you hated me. And you hated you. I know because I hated each of us the exact same. The things we’ve been through together, I hope neither one of us ever has to go through again. I pray to God that we learned. That this consequence, this terrible and long and yet so growingly beautiful three hundred and fifty eight days shows us for the rest of forever what not to do. I pray that it shows us what we had, and what we gave up.

I want you to know that I remember. No, I don’t remember what it’s like to fall in love, or how that even works. But I remember what it was like to be in love with you. I remember the details of us, all of the things I knew as such norms in my life. All of the things I now know I simply took for granted during our time together. I remember almost every moment we’ve spent together over the past near decade of our lives. Every picture I have, you have, or that someone else shared of us. I can remember the conversations we had within that split second snapshot of time. I remember the way my world lit up when you smiled at me. I remember the same bone chilling, mind numbing effect my body was overtaken by every time I felt your skin touch mine. Whenever you’d wrap your arm around me and pull me in close. Whenever you’d slip your thumb over top of mine as you held my hand. A tradition I’ll carry into any new relationship, that I didn’t know I cared about until I held your hand. I didn’t know I cared that much about being protected until you were the one who I was entrusting my heart to. I remember the way you laughed at me until you had tears rolling down your face. That machine gun laugh that I could probably near perfectly reenact to this day if I tried. That laugh that sent my stomach into fits of giggles, just at the opportunity to make fun of you. I remember wrestling, playing around constantly, knowing full well that you’d never truly hurt me. Not in that way at least. I remember one specific feeling that shatters my heart to reflect on. It’s that moment, tell me you know it. That moment when you’re walking into the room, and you look for me? I’m watching you walk in, and noticing that the first thing you want to do is find me. Make eye contact with me. Come to where I am and pull me close. That’s the one. That beautiful moment when I realize I’m the initial thought on your mind. I crave that moment. I see it happen to couples around me, people that don’t understand to truly breath that moment in like it’s their last. I remember what it feels like to have that moment happen in my very own life. I remember what it feels like when you play with my hair, without fail putting me to sleep. I still think about the way you smell. I forever found such comfort in that. Pulling you close and embracing the familiarity of your scent, as if it was an aura I could never tire of. I think about the way you so effortlessly put your arms around me for so long. I think about how simple it was to love you. For so long. I think about and remember all of it. I remember you. I remember whoever it is you used to be, the boy I used to be intoxicatingly in love with.

But then, I too remember the heartache. When I think about the good too long, it makes me question myself if all the bad was simply made up in my mind. If I came up with my own excuses to walk away, and never really had justification. But then I see my scars, and I know better. I think about the beautiful things until I remember when it turned ugly. How the two became so intertwined, they were indistinguishable. When it became so messed up that you started using my own gentle heart against me. Turning me into a bitter ice princess, that sought out nothing but anger and resentment towards you. I remember the endless arguments and the tears shed. Filling the lives in the world around me with my core cut sorrows. I remember the insecurities. I still look back and can’t believe that was ever me. I remember having to tell myself I needed to save me. Having to pep talk myself into loving who I was as a person and as a woman. Telling myself I was enough. I remember all of the times I should have let you go. How much pain, trouble, and love wasted that would have saved each of our hearts. Like the cloudy day you sat in Rosie in your driveway. I remember the scruffle on your face and the white tshirt you were wearing. I begged you and begged you to choose between me and her, and you chose her. And I stubbornly refused to accept that as a truth in my life. I should’ve just let you choose her. I remember when I pulled you over to stand in the spot that you first kissed me. I kissed you with tears streaming down my face, pathetically begging you to remember the love we shared-but you never kissed back. I remember just how bad that hurt. I should’ve let you go then too. I should’ve saved us sooner, I just didn’t know how. And I’m sorry for that.

I guess eventually, I just got tired of it all. I got sick of having the same circle round conversations and disagreements that never ended up leading anywhere. I got tired of being tormented by the scarring memories of the painful past we had. I was wasted away by being constantly reminded of the bad decisions I made for myself. It was exhausting to hold your mistakes back against you. As if any of it could have been resolved or handled. I was an exhausted and sad girl that didn’t want to be sad anymore. I just wanted to be understood by someone, by anyone. I got tired of talking about it all. The pain. I needed it to stop, and to never look back on it again.

And yet here I am. Three hundred and fifty eight days later. Still mourning the loss of the first love of my life. Putting out there in the open all of the things I never wanted to speak into my life. For the first time in an excessively long time, being vulnerable about you. Letting myself hurt and still mourn over the loss of you within who I was. I’ve spent the last three hundred and fifty eight days being strong. Holding my guard higher than it has ever been before. Blocking out any sign of hurt from anyone, but most definitely from you. Making sure that there was no way you could break the hedge of protection I held up against you and the effects you always had over me. But it leaves me with one question that I endlessly ponder.

Who’s going to be strong for me, while I’m too weak to any longer be strong for us both?

One week down, fifty one to go. There have been quite a few things I’ve learned already in just my first week of the great twenty.

_one.

I have let myself not trust, because of manipulative people. I heavily am affected negatively by the things others have pushed into my life. Cycles of pain that have seemed endless. Instead of trusting, my mind goes into a terrible cycle of overthinking. I assume that nothing good will work out, that it can’t ever work out for me. I assume that because two people have had such terrible affects on me, that there really isn’t someone amazing out there for me. I assume that people only lie, that they don’t know how to truly treat me right-and that just maybe, that’s my own fault. We accept the love we think we deserve, right?

__two.

I have learned to push my heart to prayer more. This is the thing I’m most excited about from this week. Something that I deeply crave for my relationship with Christ, is to have a stronger prayer life. I seek out to be the Prayer Warrior He desires from me. In any moment, good, bad, ugly, worse, I’ve learned to instinctually pray. No matter the length, no matter the reason, just to silence my frantic heart and pray to God. Let Him know that always, He is the first thing on my mind. That within everything I am experiencing, I know He’s seen it. That He’s allowed it into my life for a purpose. I know that those gut feelings I get, those are from the Holy Spirit. I know to pay attention to that, and to not just brush it off like it’s all in my mind. Am I going to really shy away from an opportunity to answer God’s will within my life?

___three.

Patience is simply key. I don’t have patience when it comes to certain things in my life. I don’t have patience when it comes to certain people. I don’t have it when I’m exhausted and acting selfish. As if I’m the only emotionally, physically, and mentally drained college final bound student out there. Likely. I don’t have patience and it makes me turn into a version of myself that I don’t care to see. Definitely something to take notice of, and remind myself of looking forward.

____four.

Relationship and communication are both gravely important to me. I am reading and learning a lot about how our childhoods shape us, especially women. Me. Especially women who were sexually abused. Ding ding ding. As a young girl, you want to be told and assured of all of the questions in your heart. To be told how loved and adored you are. When you’re not told this, it can be absolutely devastating to your spirit. When you’re told this in the complete wrong way, it is more than soul snatching. So forever, you will seek relationship, in the most pure and loving form. You will look for the love and tender care you never received. Same thing with communication. When you grow up around a family that doesn’t communicate their deepest thoughts, opinions, life desires, you want that. You want within your life the things you thought you could never have. You thought it was normal to go on without them. You never knew anything other than the ‘norm’ around you. Then one day you wake up and your perspective and expectations change. You see the other side, what life could be like. And your beautiful, yet devastatingly impatient heart, will not settle for anything but the best.

Being twenty, feels almost not a drop different than being nineteen. The difference, is that I’m bound and darn near determined to make it different. Twenty is going to treat me right. Whether it wants to or not. Whether I have to bend over backwards to make it. Whether I have to completely alter and transform my life. Twenty, is going to be so much more different. Twenty, is about God first, and then me second.

[April24-May1]

“The LORD your God in your midst, the Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.” -Zephaniah 3:17

Today I am so sick and tired of running around in the same circle over and over. Sick and tired of dealing with people hidden within masquerades. So sick and absolutely tired of immaturity.

Today is one of those days that you send a text to your Daddio. ‘Why do guys suck dad?’

It’s a really frustrating thing. This whole ‘be in relation with others’ hooplah. I know it’s not really hooplah, but for the sake of today, it’s going to be exactly that for me. I sometimes wish I could be one of those people that could honestly care less about it. I wish I could be one of those women that don’t need no man! And I know I don’t need one, but for once, I just wish it would’ve worked out. I just wish it would’ve been different than you try your hardest not to expect to happen. These are the situations that define the stereotype of the rest of your kind, ‘You’re just like every other guy.’ Really though, you never expect things to end up the way they do. You seek out the best in people. When you meet someone, you are charmed. Completely blind sided by how amazing they seem. Like you could never imagine any reason you’d ever get frustrated at them. Like you literally don’t expect that so soon, you’re already so absolutely fed up.

Even when I feel like I hate this ridiculous broken hearted feeling, I don’t know how to get away from it. Yes, to you and probably most of the world, it’s a few weeks. It’s just different for me. I’ve never known how to put it into the right definitive words. What a very select few get about me is my heart. My heart is everything you could wonder about me, it will tell you anything you need to know. I care. That being said is such a small word to really define it’s depths within me. I truly pray, hope, and seek out the absolute best for everyone. I would do whatever it took to make sure everyone around me has the best they ever could have. What really irks me about that, is that in moments like these-really crappy, emotionally taken advantage of moments-I really despise my heart. Times like right now, I wish I knew how to hold back the way that I care. The ability to pick and choose when to open up, or brush someone off like it’s nothing. Saving it for people that I feel won’t take advantage of it. Although you would think that nobody would be able to do something so shallow. I can’t even comprehend how pathetic and sad that wish is of my heart. Even though my bitter mood may temporarily think that, I don’t ever truly want that. I don’t ever want to feel like I need to withhold the beauty I’ve been blessed with of caring on such a deep level for others.

Today though, I just can’t wrap my head around it. I feel so annoyed, hopeless, and bitter. I’m so far past blaming any guy that I’ve had feelings for. I don’t see the point in that, as for the most part they were pretty decent people. With a few exceptions of course-and y’all know who you are as you’re creeping this very post. Now it’s to the point where I literally want to go to any ex boyfriend or ‘thing’ that I had in my life at some point and ask them what it is. What is it about me that makes it not work? I rant the same situation over and over and over, but nothing ever changes. So what is that thing that I do or say or something that makes absolute sure nothing good ever comes out of me caring about any of you?

Deep down, even as I sit here extremely irate, I know my own answer. God. I still haven’t given God the time and space He needs and dang well deserves to work within my heart fully. I know that when I can do that, so many things in my life and in my heart will fall into place. Everything will. I guess now all there is to do is let you all go. Let go of this ridiculous notion that anyone will ever be ‘truly good.’ Rather, focus on letting God work within me, instead of dreaming you’ll end up different than the last. Here’s to hoping.